give the title Vasudeva to a
series of supermen, and a remarkable legend states[394] that a king
called Paundraka who pretended to be a deity used the title Vasudeva
and ordered Krishna to cease using it, for which impertinence he was
slain. This clearly implies that the title was something which could
be detached from Krishna and not a mere patronymic. Indian writings
countenance both etymologies of the word. As the name of the deity
they derive it from _vas_ to dwell, he in whom all things abide and
who abides in all.[395]

5

Siva and Vishnu are not in their nature different from other Indian
ideas, high or low. They are the offspring of philosophic and poetic
minds playing with a luxuriant popular mythology. But even in the
epics they have already become fixed points in a flux of changing
fancies and serve as receptacles in which the most diverse notions are
collected and stored. Nearly all philosophy and superstition finds its
place in Hinduism by being connected with one or both of them. The two
worships are not characteristic of different periods: they coexist
when they first become known to us as they do at the present day and
in essential doctrines they are much alike. We have no name for this
curious double theism in which each party describes its own deity as
the supreme god or All-god, yet without denying the god of the other.
Something similar might be produced in Christianity if different
Churches were avowedly to worship different persons of the Trinity.

Siva and Vishnu are sometimes contrasted and occasionally their
worshippers quarrel.[396] But the general inclination is rather to
make the two figures approximate by bestowing the same attributes on
both. A deity must be able to satisfy emotional devotion: hence the
Tamil Sivaite says of Siva the destroyer, "one should worship in
supreme love him who does kindness to the soul." But then the feature
in the world which most impresses the Hindu is the constant change and
destruction, and this must find a place in the All-god. Hence the
sportive kindly Krishna comes to be declared the destroyer of the
worlds.[397] It is as if in some vast Dravidian temple one wandered
through two corridors differently ornamented and assigned to the
priests of different rites but both leading to the same image. Hence
it is not surprising to find that there is actually a deity--if indeed
the term is suitable, but European vocabularies hardly provide one
which meets th